FOSDEM 2020 Open Source Design organisation

Events
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@amit.lzkpa thanks for putting this together. I’m planning to be at FOSDEM for the first time and I’m very excited about it!

I guess I’m still a little confused about what a devroom is and what the next steps are.

It sounds like Open Source Design now has a room for an entire day (great!) and we need to fill the time with various talks? Is that right? Is it eight hours of talks or something? And we should propose some topics within Penta for the devroom? 20 minute presentations?

Nobody needs to answer all these question. I guess I’ll find out when I get there. :smile:

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42

Hi @amit.lzkpa

Thanks for putting this together. So far is looking good. The main issue is the date. I think our devroom is scheduled for Sunday this year, not Saturday :slight_smile:

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Updated CfP

FOSDEM is the Free and Open source Software Developers’ European Meeting, a free and non-commercial two-day weekend event that offers all open source contributors a place to meet, share ideas, learn and collaborate.

After 5 successful years we will host another design devroom at FOSDEM 2020!

The Open Source Design devroom will take place on Sunday, February 2nd, at Université Libre Brussels.

The exact room will be confirmed in the coming months.

This will be a full day of talks about design work on free, libre and open source projects.

We invite you to send in your submissions about design work on free, libre and open source projects.

We mean ‘design’ in the broadest sense: user research, interface and interaction design, information architecture, visual design, typography, illustration, iconography, spatial, accessibility (and anything you can think of) – all in the context of open source projects, which we believe introduces unique challenges.

Designers and developers working with designers (or on a design-minded project) are welcome to submit proposals.

Possible topics include:

  • FOSS design tools
  • Unique challenges that open source brings
  • Design techniques and deliverables
  • Design/engineering collaboration approaches
  • User engagement and design research activities
  • Project case studies
    In the past we’ve had talks about getting designers involved in open source, accessibility in open source, application design and development, beyond logos, architectural font digitisation and design and lots more.

If you’re interested in seeing all previous talks, have a look at the schedule, and videos for previous years (links below).

Recording and licensing of talks
The talks in the Open Source Design devroom will be audio and video recorded, and possibly streamed live too.

By submitting a proposal you consent to be recorded and agree to license the content of your talk under a Creative Commons (CC-BY) license.

What and how to submit

Submission format: 20-minute presentations

Submission deadline: 1st December 2019

How to submit

All submissions are made in the Pentabarf event planning tool 4 at https://penta.fosdem.org/submission/FOSDEM20/

When submitting your talk in Pentabarf, when asked for the ‘Track’, you must select the ‘Open source design devroom’.

If you already have a Pentabarf account from a previous year, please reuse it: create an account only if you don’t have one from a previous year.

If you have any issues with Pentabarf, do not despair: contact amit.lzkpa@gmail.com

Open Source Design

The Open Source Design Devroom is co-ordinated by the Open Source Design community.
Check out the links below to learn more about us

Examples of past talks

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44

I updated the CfP.
Fixed the date and added some links and formatting.

Let me know if it looks good.
If it’s okay I would like to submit it on 10th (or even earlier if possible).

It’s on the wiki so everyone’s welcome to make edits.

What other channels do web use to make the announcement after they publish it?

@belenbarrospena @ei8fdb @victoria-bondarchuk @evalica
Sunday is the day that was allotted to us.
Are we all good on that?

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45

@pdurbin
Hi Philip
Thank you.
Glad to hear about your excitement.

I’ll try to answer your questions to the best of my knowledge.
Anyone else reading this is welcome to correct or add to it.

Yes. We have a day of our devroom which is scheduled not just with talks but also panel discussions and pitches. I think we’ll know better as we gather talk proposals. You can check out the schedule from last year to gather an idea of what it’s like.

Yes. You are right about proposing topics through Penta and everyone’s welcome to propose even other ideas.

You can find our call for proposals for this year taking shape on one of the comments in this thread. Feel free to make any suggestions you may have yourself.

20 mins is ideal for talk proposals unless you have a very compelling reason.

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46

Hi Amit. We had a discussion in the past (like Belen is saying) and the conclusion then was to move away from the GitHub discussions on issues, and focus on the Forum.

Now, the discussion was for issues, not for tasks and projects boards. If you think this would increase our productivity level, we could try it. But, it still means that we would have this split between the forum and GitHub, plus there are not that many people involved in the organizing of the Devroom, so maybe we don’t need a project board yet. So I have mixed feelings, but if you think we should try it, IMO we could. The main benefit of using those board would be to know exactly what is still left to do and ask for volunteers for it.

Thanks for working on the CfP.

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47

Yes.

That is my main reason for trying out project board. Even with just a few people trying to coordinate the devroom it can be useful for everyone to get an idea about the status of tasks.

In case of times where we feel like one person might be unable to complete a task on time or not being responsive it’ll be easier for others to jump in and get it done.

And for things like the CfP or other things that we need a consensus on I can copy the relevant info onto discourse.
The difficulty with discourse-like thread I imagine would to be find the correct post with the latest updates.

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48

Hi @amit.lzkpa

Thanks for putting the CfP together: looks good to me. If nobody else comments by the 10th, feel free to release it to the world :slight_smile:

If I am not mistaken, the CfP should be emailed to the FOSDEM mailing list and it should be published on opensourcedesign.net. Then we use the Twitter account to make some noise about it, and we individually promote it within our own circles.

Everybody else: please correct me or add if I’ve forgotten something!

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49

Alright!
I just sent it out.

@victoria-bondarchuk @evalica @belenbarrospena
Please let me know your email IDs if you wish to be included in the CCs.

How do we update it on the website?

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50

Great! :slight_smile: Thanks, @amit.lzkpa

I’ve just realised that I didn’t specify which FOSDEM mailing list the CFP should be sent to: it needs to go to fosdem@lists.fosdem.org, which is the public mailing list. If you are not subscribed to that one, and you don’t want to subscribe, @ei8fdb or myself can send it.

About the website, we need to create a new entry in the Events section for the 2020 CfP (https://opensourcedesign.net/events/). Here is last year’s as an example

https://opensourcedesign.net/events/2019/02/02/opensourcedesign-fosdem-2019

If you need help with this, please do let me know. We’ll be happy to help with this as well.

Thank so you much for the great work so far! :slight_smile:

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51

Since nobody voluntereed to organise the OSD stand at FOSDEM :_( I have gone ahead and submitted the application myself. This is what I sent (pretty much the same as last year):

Stand Request for FOSDEM 2020

We acknowledge that we have received your request for the following stand.
After we review all stands requests, we will inform you accordingly via email.

Project: Open Source Design
Coordinator: Belen Barros Pena
Coordinator email: belenbarrospena@gmail.com
Secondary contact: Bernard Tyers
Secondary email: bernard@ei8fdb.org

Description:
Open Source Design is a community of designers and developers advocating human-centered and participatory design processes within free and open source software. We understand “design” in a broad sense, and our community includes interaction designers, content experts, design researchers, information architects, graphic designers, usability and user experience professionals, and of course software developers. What we all share is the conviction that engaging users in the process of developing software results in better software.

Our stand will be running a “design clinic”, an informal one-to-one set up where you can sit down with a designer to talk about your FOSS project, ask questions and seek advice on diverse aspects of design, from usability testing to typography. Our volunteer designers have a mix of skills and experience, both in commercial and FOSS projects.

Coordinator’s affinity to the project:
I have been involved with Open Source Design since its inception. I was the main co-ordinator of the first and second devrooms in 2015 and 2016, and have been closely involved in the organisation of the subsequent devrooms. I also co-ordinated the Open Source Design stands in 2018 and 2019.

Why does it fit FOSDEM
Open Source Design has been present at FOSDEM since 2015, when we organised our first devroom. Our sole purpose is advocating human-centered design within FOSS. Our devrooms have been well attended, and we have seen strong demand for design contributions.

Over the past two years, the stand and the design clinic have given us the opportunity to engage more actively with projects, and have created opportunities for stable and long-term collaborations between designers and FOSS projects. We would like to repeat the activity in 2020.

Project website URL:

Project logo URL:

Project contact email address:
core@opensourcedesign.net

Source code location:

Relevant URLs:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/opensrcdesign
Forum: https://discourse.opensourcedesign.net/

Days:
both

Theme:
Other

Number of tables:
One

Special requirements:
None

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52

And since it’s bucketing down in London and you can’t really go anywhere, I’ve also published the CfP on the website (https://opensourcedesign.net/events/2020/02/02/opensourcedesign-fosdem-2020) and sent it to the FOSDEM general mailing list (https://lists.fosdem.org/pipermail/fosdem/2019q4/002896.html).

Which means we can go and tell the whole world about it :slight_smile: Please spread the word!

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53

Thanks!
I’d already sent it to them on the same id.

It’s great you volunteered for the stands.
Kudos! :clap::clap::clap:

That sounds like a very london weather…:cloud_with_rain:

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Hey all!

I was catching up with the devroom mails and don’t think there is anything there that we need to discuss yet.

The pentabarf system is new to me so having some difficulty getting my head around that.
So far I see 3 talks submitted to our track this year:

They all look incomplete or someone testing it out.
I can see one was by @belenbarrospena. Not sure about the rest.
Please let me know if that’s incorrect.

For spreading the word:
This is the list I have collated so far from previous year’s threads:

@ei8fdb
Do we need a common list so we can ensure we don’t spam any of the lists?

Besides these please let me know if there’s something I need to be aware of.

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55

I read through some of the github issue conversations from previous years and it was awesome (and scary) to see all the discussions and planning around this!

Regarding the planning and talks:
I remember the panel discussion from the devroom last year. I think that was really cool and what do you all think about having the same again?

Looking at the tentative schedule from 2016 I suppose we would again have time for 17 talks/sessions(20 mins each).
The last one was for the shout outs which I think is awesome and I say we reserve a slot for that.
In the remaining 16 slots what does everyone think about having 1 or 2 panel discussions again?
Some topic suggestions:

  • How your workplace manages designers working with developers and what OS can learn from it.
  • Design research methodologies and how we can make the insights more accessible to non-designers.
  • Inviting some OS project maintainers to ask where they see design fitting in their project.

I haven’t ever organized a discussion like so and would be great to hear from you all about your experience with it from last year.

Editing this post because discourse doesn’t let more than 3 consecutive posts.

Follwing over the tradition of copying over @evalica’s awesome checklist.

Have only partially updated it and will copy it here once done.

Also I thought it’ll be a good idea to open up a thread for brainstorming for the devroom to everyone on the forum.

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Hi @amit.lzkpa

You are right that for now there is not much to do :slight_smile:

I think the main task at the moment is to promote the CfP to make sure people know about it. That checklist with mailing lists to contact is great: maybe we could all add to it and simply tick the checkbox whenever we have sent the email to one of them. I’ve tried to edit the list to add one more item, but I don’t seem have an “edit” option. Am I missing something?

Don’t worry about Pentabarf: it is a bit of a strange beast. By now @victoria-bondarchuk @evalica and @ei8fdb are experts on it! :wink:

About the panels, I think it’s a great idea. To make one happen, just make sure you submit the session to Pentabarf. I would personally be quite interested in the one about research methodologies and would be happy to help with that one.

And about the brainstorming thread, by all means start one! It’s always good to have a place to bounce ideas :slight_smile:

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All sounds good!

I had to change the setting to make the wiki publicly editable.
Just did that. It should work now.
Let me know if you gibe it a try.

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Only people that organize the room have access to those links, so we cannot see them, just for the record. That’s why, when we will do the voting session on the talks, the organizers will need to copy the submission details for the voting (in a spreadsheet or a voting system).

Regarding the count: you’ve mentioned 3 talks. I’m curios if you’ve seen my talk submission too. I know Belen did some tests for the Usability Test Workshop in Berlin, so some entries need to be deleted / ignored.

Besides the mailing lists we also created a tweet (or multiple, from time to time) on the opensrcdesign handle. Found it: https://twitter.com/opensrcdesign/status/1183002464108339200

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IMO the panel was really nice, but we need to find someone to organize it. Usually the person that is submitting the talk handles it. This year I want to give the “UI/UX Tips&Tricks” talk. Also, we try to involve as many people and as diverse as we can, so, if possible, 1 talk per person.

In terms of ‘traditions’ we usually have 2 entries:

  1. the 12:00 talk about our community. Should we do it again? Ideally besides the introductory / get to know us things, we also do status updates: and we have some new nice things, like the ApacheCon, the Usability Workshop, etc. From what I understood @jan will not be available for FOSDEM, so is someone else interested in organizing it?
  2. as you’ve mentioned, the “Developers looking for designers? Show off your project!” slot that we have at the end.

Regarding the checklist, we should have it here, in a comment or somewhere, but it would be great to have it filled, which checks for what is already done, so we should know where can we help.

Great work, Amit! Thanks for handling all this.

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60

Hi amit!

I’m sorry for my lack of input over the last while. I’ve been very busy and distracted by other things. Well done on handling things so far. It seems like you’re a natural. :clap: :wink:

The pentabarf system is new to me so having some difficulty getting my head around that.

Yes Pentabarf is…a unique animal. What you have to do as a devroom manager is not at all clear until you’ve been explained how to use it. So don’t think it’s you.

Last year I was so grateful to @victoria-bondarchuk for shepherding me through its dangers.

Right now as @belenbarrospena said we’ve not got anything really to do with it, except every week or so check on the number of submissions.

When we need to accept/reject talks we can do it together. How’s that?

So far I see 3 talks submitted to our track this year:

https://penta.fosdem.org/event/edit/9369
https://penta.fosdem.org/event/edit/9268
https://penta.fosdem.org/event/edit/9258

They all look incomplete or someone testing it out.

https://penta.fosdem.org/event/edit/9268 above is a test submission we created during a workshop at ApacheCon, so it can be ignored. @amit.lzkpa can you try to delete it from Pentabarf, as I’ve not got the necessary rights yet.

The other 2 are real submissions.

I have asked the FOSDEM devroom manager list to get admin access to this year’s Open Source Design (OSD) Pentabarf, but not succeeded yet.

Do we need a common list so we can ensure we don’t spam any of the lists?

In terms of spreading the news, this is something that we’ve all shared in the past. My main places for advertising the devroom has been in 1) mailing lists and 2) twitter.

How I’ve done 1) is:

  • identify the lists I feel are relevant
  • contact the list owner/maintainer, explain I’d like to promote the devroom on the list with 1 email. If they agree I subscribe and advertise it. I then stay subscribed in case people ask questions

It would be great if we could all identify 5-6 mailing lists/communities to promote the devroom too to spread the work.

For promoting it on twitter I have a few tweets I schedule every few days and then send then using Tweetdeck (I :heart: Tweetdeck!).

What does everyone think about taking 5-6 mailing lists/communities to promote the devroom?

If anyone has better ideas or other suggestions, I’d love to hear them.

Looking forward to Brussels in February!

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